Attractions

Looking like a lost palace in the urban desert, the National Museum occupies a striking position in front of the Kopet Dag. It’s actually a collection of three pricey museums – the History Museum, the Nature & E…

Unveiled in 2014, this vast complex features three memorials honouring those that died in the 1948 earthquake, soldiers who perished in WWII and those killed in other Turkmen battles. The Earthquake Memorial feature…

At the centre of Ashgabat is the enormous Independence Square, on which sits the golden-domed Palace of Turkmenbashi (the place of work of the former president), the Ministry of Fairness, the Ministry of Defence and…

Once the centrepiece of Niyazov's Ashgabat, the Arch of Neutrality was erected to celebrate the Turkmen people's unsurprisingly unanimous endorsement of Turkmenbashi's policy of neutrality in 1998. Above the arch it…

While there’s a limit to the number of rugs the average visitor can stand, the central exhibit, the world’s largest handwoven rug, really is something to see (though you can see it hanging from the lobby when you en…

The Museum of Fine Arts is located in an impressive building with a big rotunda, two tiers and lots of gold. The collection contains some great Soviet–Turkmen artwork: happy peasant scenes with a backdrop of yurts a…

The Altyn Asyr Shopping Centre is the curious pyramidal shopping centre at the northern end of Independence Park. The Monument to the Independence of Turkmenistan, known to some expats as ‘the plunger’ (for reasons …

The statue of Lenin, in a small park off Azadi köçesi, is a charmingly incongruous assembly of a tiny Lenin on an enormous and very Central Asian plinth surrounded by fountains. Its walls feature modernist concrete …

This Soviet-era circus building, which resembles a flying saucer, has been 'Turkmenised' with a coating of white marble. It's definitely worth a look if you're collecting snaps of quirky landmarks, but we don't reco…

More a statement of foreign-policy leanings than a sign of religious awakening, the Azadi mosque, similar in appearance to the Blue Mosque in İstanbul, stands just south of Magtymguly şayoli, 600m east of the juncti…

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